Jennifer Michael Hecht

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Jennifer Michael Hecht (b. November 23, 1965) is a poet, historian, philosopher, and author.

Jennifer Michael Hecht
Jennifer Michael Hecht

Hecht's scholarly articles and poetry have been published in many journals and magazines. She has also written book reviews for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The American Scholar and other publications. She has written several columns for The New York Times online "Times Select."

Contents

  • 1 Background
  • 2 Published Works
  • 3 Bibliography
    • 3.1 History and Philosophy
    • 3.2 Poetry
  • 4 Translations
  • 5 External links

Background

Born in Glen Cove, New York on Long Island, Hecht attended Adelphi University. She earned her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Columbia University in 1995 and for a time studied at the Université de Caen, and the Université d’Angers. She currently teaches poetry and philosophy in the Graduate Writing Program of The New School and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Published Works

In 2002 her debut poetry collection The Next Ancient World received the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America, as well as ForeWord Magazine's award for Poetry Book of the Year. Her second collection, Funny, won the 2005 Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin Press.

In 2003 Hecht published two books of history and philosophy with two different publishers. The first, Doubt: A History, is an epic, world-wide study of religious doubt throughout history. The other, The End of the Soul, is a profile of an unusual group of eighteenth-century French anthropologists who formed the Society of Mutual Autopsy to discover links between personality, ability and brain morphology. It received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for 2004 from the Phi Beta Kappa Society as a book that "is an important contribution to knowledge, serious scholarship with a broad pertinence to the human condition."

In 2007 Hecht published The Happiness Myth: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong in which she attempts to examine happiness through historical perspective.

Bibliography

History and Philosophy

  • 2003 The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France, 1876-1936 — ISBN 0-231-12846-0
  • 2003 Doubt: A History — ISBN 0-06-009795-7
  • 2007 The Happiness Myth — ISBN 0-06-081397-0

Periodicals: The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, The Journal of the History of Ideas, Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society, French Historical Studies, and others.

Poetry

Books:

  • 2001 The Next Ancient World — ISBN 0-9710310-0-2
  • 2005 Funny — ISBN 0-299-21400-1

Collections:

  • Best American Poetry 2005, Paul Muldoon and David Lehman, eds. (Scribner's, 2005).
  • Good Poems for Hard Times, Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking/Penguin, 2005).
  • Poetry Daily, Boller, Selby, and Yost, eds. (Sourcebooks, 2003).
  • Good Poems, Garrison Keillor, ed. (Viking/Penguin, 2002).
  • Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times, Joan Murray, ed. (Beacon, 2001).
  • The Best American Poetry 1999, Robert Bly and David Lehman, eds. (Scribner's, 1999).

Periodicals: The New York Times, Partisan Review, Ms. Magazine, Antioch Review, Barrow Street, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Salmagundi, Quarterly West, Missouri Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, River City, and other journals.

Translations

Portuguese:

  • "Dúvida: uma História", 2005
  • Interview with Jennifer Michael Hecht (May 2007) on Speak of Faith with Krista Tippett
  • Persondata
    NAME Hecht, Jennifer Michael
    ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hecht, Jennifer
    SHORT DESCRIPTION Philosopher, poet, historian, author
    DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1965
    PLACE OF BIRTH Glen Cove, Long Island, New York, United States
    DATE OF DEATH
    PLACE OF DEATH
    .
    This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from a Wikipedia article. To access the original click here.
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    under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
    or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
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    A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
    Free Documentation License".